The stupidness of the hotel bombings in Jordon, or why Al-Queda just doesn’t get it

One of the first things modern organized crime learned when they set up shop in America in the late 19th Century, and this is common sense when you think about but still, is that you don’t kill your customers.

Sure, you might bluff that you’ll kill them if they don’t pay your loaned-shark money back on time, you might even break their knees if they’re really late paying off a bet made to one of your bookies, and you might roll them outside in an alley when they get blind drunk at one of your illegal “liquoir houses” and houses of prostitution, but when you kill them then they aren’t income producers for you any longer and the name of the game for “The Mob” is always money, is always profit.

In Al-Queda’s case, what they’re selling isn’t whores or gambling or liquor, it’s ideology, and they just don’t get it apparently that even though they’re selling an intangible they’re still trying to sell something and if you go out and kill your customers just because they’re wearing the wrong kind of necktie or go to a church which is a little different from your own, then not only are you killing your best advertisements, your customer base that would otherwise be loyal to you, but you’re killing scaring the fool out of other potential customers and they’ll start avoiding all contact with you at all costs even though they might really want to down deep inside want to buy what you’re selling.